Visual Studio Team System

(VSTS)

Richard Hundhausen

• Author of software development books• Microsoft Regional Director • Microsoft MVP (VSTS)• MCT, MCSD, MCDBA• richard@accentient.com

Challenges with building distributed solutions

• Lack of communication– Email, IM, and Meetings– The team is not on the same page

• Lack of tool integration– Working with too many tools today– VS, VSS, Visio, NUnit, NAnt, FxCop, ACT

• Lack of (good) process guidance– Many methodologies out there– Shops like to customize

• We need to increase the predictability of success

What is Team System?

• Integrated suite of tools to support the entire software development lifecycle– Tools for the entire team– Visual Studio 2005 add-Ins– Microsoft Excel and Project add-Ins– Standalone tools and command line utilities– Team Foundation Services (the "backend")– SQL Reporting Services and WSS portals– Process guidance documentation

• MSF 4.0 (Agile and CMMI Compliance)

Features by Edition

Team Foundation Server

• Collaboration– Work Item Tracking

• Scenarios, QoS Reqs, Risks, Tasks, Bugs, Custom

– Reports

• Software Configuration Management (SCM)– Three tier, SQL 2005, Web services API– Merging, branching, shelving

• Build Management

Team Foundation Services Architecture

Team System Extensibility

• Team System is an extensible platform• Team Foundation Services

– Eventing model and many APIs exposed– Add your own methodology templates

• Visual Studio 2005– VSIP partners are welcome to extend– Already a few: Borland, AmberPoint, Olenick &

Associates, BrightWork, Osellus

• Visual Studio SDK

Team System for Project Managers

• No direct mapping to a Team System edition– All editions have capability to do PM activities– Visual Studio 2005, Excel, Project, Team

Explorer

• Activities– Create and configure the team projects– Assign work items– Monitor status by querying work items or

viewing reports on the project portal

Team System for Architects

• Activities– Create Logical Datacenter diagrams– Create Application diagrams– Compose application components into

"systems"– Create trial deployment diagrams

• Validate AD against LDD

– Generate deployment reports– Implement application components (Web

services), thus kicking off development

Team System for Developers

• Problem Space– Developers are not writing quality code– No/inadequate source code control– No way to relate code changes to justification

• Activities (besides writing code)– Run unit tests with adequate code coverage– Run static analysis– Profile code– Check-in, check-out code

• Associating comments and/or work items

Team System for Testers

• Problem Space– Testing tools are not integrated– No version control for tests– No integrated notification mechanism

• Activities– Unit testing and code coverage (overlap with

dev)– Web testing (record and playback URL

interactions)– Load testing (simulate multiple users)– Test management (manual and 3rd party tests)

Team System for Everyone Else

• Can access real-time reports on the Portal• Can use Excel or Project to maintain work

items• Can use Team Explorer or command-line

utilities to view/edit project artifacts – no need for Visual Studio

Summary

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System is for the entire team, not just the developers

• All the tools are integrated into Visual Studio

• Not all team members need Visual Studio– Excel, Project, Team Explorer, and Internet

Explorer